During the last two years, we have come across many articles, statements, opinions, studies, conferences, pictures, and videos about Syria that pretty much cover the spectrum of the insanity of humankind all the way to its most cherished attributes. Between the savagery of Assad and the kindness of Angelina Jolie, one cannot but see the worst and the best humanity has to offer outside the scope of politics or self-interests.
But when you read a Blog published in the Times of Israel entitled “Stop the Killing: Give Assad His Win”, you cannot but see a third dimension between the good and the ugly that fits into the twilight zone sprinkled with either naivete or another form of anger.
We are going to assume it is naivete because we know so little about Ms. Lynette Nusbacher and because as Muslims, we have great faith in the Democratic moral values of Israel, a country that rose from the ashes of barbarism and unimaginable violence against a people whose only sin is their acute intelligence and contribution to humanity in general.
We are going to assume that Ms. Nusbacher, given how little she knows about the Assad regime, may not know that the Assad killing and torture machine aimed at Syrians steaming with brutality never rests. He is to Syrians what Hitler was to Germans, a brutal dictator willing to gas his own people and torture women and children just to remain in power.
We are also going to assume that Ms. Nusbacher is unaware of what might happen if Assad wins. If she is truly concerned about the 100,000 killed so far, which we presume she is sincere about, she should also find out what might happen next if Assad comes out on top. Assad will go on a revenge killing slow spree the likes of which humanity has never seen. How would any Jew who lived through the horrors of the Holocaust during WWII feel about an article entitled “Stop the Holocaust: Let Hitler Stay”?
Would Hitler have stopped?
Would humanity have witnessed all the good the Jewish people have done since WWII in every field be it in sciences or humanities if the world just stood by?
We are going to assume Ms. Nusbacher did not read about a young Syrian student activist named Alaa Morelli whose eyewitness account of the horrors of the Assad prisons describing, in her own words, how she “.. saw a cell packed with some 40 women, all naked, blindfolded and handcuffed. They weren’t allowed to sit, they could only stand.”
Now think back to the aftermath of 1945 when the most decent countries and leaders stood by the Jewish people, and rightly so, to show compassion, kindness, and grace, which many of us still to this day feel towards all the Jewish people.
Think back to the suffering of Jewish mothers and women, tortured and gassed at the hands of the Nazis, that our women and children are experiencing today at the hands of the psychopath Baschar al-Assad. Why reciprocating such compassion is in short supply towards an innocent people hardly involved in violence against Israel, and harbor no ills towards the Jewish State? The Syrian people are not enemies of Israel, except when directed intentionally by the Assad regime you seem intent on extending its life. We are not all Islamists thirsting for blood or violence. The absolute majority of Syrians want to live peacefully and have a normal life.
We are going to assume that Ms. Nusbacher is afraid, and she has every right, of all Arabs and Muslims who call for Jihad. However, this sense of insecurity and anger many Israelis have experienced and still to this day experience at the hands of Islamic terror must not get in the way of grasping that sustained violence, by our foes or our friends, breeds more violence. Giving Assad his win simply perpetuates the violence of a dictator Syrians and Israelis must know will serve no purpose but to extend a general state of violence and chaos.
How could incessant violence against helpless people next door put a lid on violence in the West Bank or Gaza?
We are going to assume as well that you have not watched the many videos on YouTube showing the Assad forces slowly torturing civilians by stabbing them repeatedly with a knife too small to kill right away, or his men beheading captured Free Syrian Army fighters while still alive; out of respect for the sufferings the Jewish people endured, we are refraining from posting the links to these videos.
Your indifference to Assad’s violence against his people cement the very ideas many Muslims like ourselves try to discount about Israeli intentions, which we know by and large are not true. It projects the image of a neighborly people who wishes harm to befell upon its neighbors construed more out of ignorance than understanding. To give Assad his win is to seek for our butcher to sharpen his knife upon the innocent necks of his victims.
We are neighbors Ms. Nusbacher. We both have seen the outer edges of extreme human violence and we both must reason that violent men, Islamic terror, and oppressive regimes are the source of all evil in the region, the one that usually kills the innocent regardless where they live or what they stand for. If we have successfully stopped the evil of Islamic terror in Egypt, why are we giving secular terror a free pass in Syria? It is about terror and violence, no?
Ms. Nusbacker, do not buckle to violence, even if your friend commits it.
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